Worcester officials say state report on struggling schools is accurate

WORCESTER — School officials say newly-released state reports on the progress of the district's most struggling schools is an accurate report of their work and vindicates much of what they have done.

However, work remains, especially in terms of curriculum.

The five reports, which are on the agenda for tonight's School Committee meeting, were put together by state contractor SchoolWorks, which evaluated each of the district's Level 4 schools — Union Hill, Chandler Elementary Community and Burncoat Street Preparatory; the district itself; and the district's wraparound zone, a network of coordinators which tries to better connect students at eight of the district's schools with services.

The district-level report will be part of what state Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Mitchell D. Chester considers when he decides this fall whether Union Hill and Chandler Elementary should come off Level 4 status. Other factors will include Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test scores, also due to be released this fall, other measures related to them, and attendance.

The state designated the schools Level 4 because they were among the lowest-performing and least improving, and each was given three years to make improvements. Union Hill and Chandler Elementary have finished their three years, while Burncoat Street is in its second year.

Overall, the district was praised for focusing its spending on student achievement, hiring and supporting effective staff, supporting students' academic and non-academic needs, and developing good practices at the school level.

However, when the SchoolWorks team visited in March, they found that "The curricula and instructional practices in the district are not developed or implemented to attain high levels of achievement for all students."

The report found that those practices were "not present," which Superintendent Melinda J. Boone said meant they were not yet having a measurable impact on student learning.

She and Chief Academic Officer Marco Rodrigues said the district's curriculum has already improved since March and remains a focus, as does ensuring students are consistently pushed to use higher-order thinking skills, a concern also mentioned in the SchoolWorks reports.

Ms. Boone, who arrived in the district in 2009, said her administration has beefed up the curriculum renewal process. The latest Massachusetts state frameworks, which include the Common Core being adopted by a number of states, are grade-level specific, which has helped district groups map out units more specifically than before.

She noted that the work the district is doing with curriculum would be happening whether the latest state frameworks included the Common Core or whether the state had simply updated its frameworks on its own. She estimated that 85 percent of the Common Core was already part of the old Massachusetts frameworks.

The school reports themselves mirrored the district report in some ways. Each of the schools has effective leaders and uses student assessments well, but to varying degrees, they also need to finish curriculum development work.

"I know that if they came back today, they would see significant progress from the school and also from the district in this area," Union Hill Principal Marie D. Morse said of the SchoolWorks visitors.

She was pleased with the report overall. "I'm proud that these outside eyes came in and saw such high quality and collaborative work in action."

Burncoat Street Prep Principal Deborah L. Catamero said the report on her school was "extremely fair."

"The feedback was relevant and very helpful to us and really validated what we've been doing at the school," she said.

As to whether the reports indicate Union Hill and Chandler Elementary are likely to move out of Level 4 status, Ms. Boone and Mr. Rodrigues would not speculate. "We're hopeful," Ms. Boone said.

As for the district's wraparound zone, the report found that the district has a clear referral process for identifying students' academic and non-academic needs and maintains relationships with a variety of partners. It also noted, however, that "a systematic plan to sustain the work at each wraparound zone site is not clear." The three-year grant that pays for most of the district's wraparound services will expire in 2014.

"We're hopeful it can be sustained," said Wraparound Zone Manager Robert E. Jennings, Jr., but he also acknowledged that his team will have to do a better job quantifying their achievements.